The Classical Quarterly (New Series)

Table of Contents - 1964 - Volume 14, Issue 01  

Research Article

The Way of Truth

Simon Tugwella1

a1 Corpus Christi College, Oxford

Professor G. E. L. OWEN has demonstrated (C.Q. N.S. X [1960], 84 ff.) that Parmenides' Way of Truth is to be taken as a self-contained logical argument. The basis for this argument is a proof that whatever we may choose to think about S0009838800008508_inline1 The first stage of this proof is contained in B 2.

According to Owen's reconstruction of the argument, Parmenides' method is to take the three possible answers to the question S0009838800008508_inline2 (i.e. an unqualified yes; an unqualified no; and a noncommittal answer that some- times we must say yes, sometimes no) and rule out two of them. This view involves giving equal status to each of the two wrong answers; but Parmenides appears not to do this. At the start of B 2 he undertakes to tell us